March 2009 Entries

Oh my friends, you are about to be treated to a whole blog post-worth of SEXY! My MVP Summit interview has been posted up, and you can experience it in all its glory below. There’s also interviews with another of Canada’s sexiest developers, Rob Windsor: There’s also an interview with Craig Nicholson, a South African XBox MVP and some info on the MVP’s in the videos that you can intellectually gorge yourself on at the original blog post for all of this media here. D ......

If you’re a fan of the Big Bang Theory (and if you aren’t, you *should* be), you probably remember the genius that was Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-... Many have seen this and probably assumed the genius was created by the writers of the show. However, and this being one of the awesome aspects of Big Bang Theory, the reality is that the game has been around since at least 2005 on the internet; the writers simply taking a little-known aspect of geek culture and incorporating it into the script, to ......

I’ve uncovered a fiendish plot tonight to try and dissuade Canadians from going to TechEd this year! I wanted to check the dates to see if they coincided with any of the upcoming NIN|JA tour dates, but when I went to the TechEd site at www.microsoft.com/events/Te... I saw…THIS: I tried refreshing…I even tried opening up another browser, but to no avail. So I did what anyone else would do: I turned to Twitter. However, it wasn’t enough that Andrew Duthie took my constructive critique of his ......

If you’re looking for some examples of how to use MOSS as a public facing website, check out Hawaiian Air. They built their website with MOSS 2007 and there’s also a short case study available that talks about some of the experiences creating the solution. I found these links as part of Kanwal Khipple’s recent presentation at the Boston SharePoint Saturday on MOSS 2007 branding. You can view his slide deck from the event here. D ......

By default comments are disabled on SharePoint blogs. Here’s how you enabled them: Go to your blog page and click the Manage Comments link under the Admin links. Expand the settings menu and select List Settings. Click on “Permissions for this List”. Click on the NT Authority\authenticated users. Now here’s the part I think is sort of screwy. Out of the box, you can grant people full, design, contribute, and read permissions. The closes that you’d want is contribute. However, this still gives your ......

Now that the cat is out of the bag, we can all FINALLY talk about Silverlight 3 and all the sweetness it brings to the Microsoft RIA space. Below are some links to fantastic blog posts highlighting some of the new features. Tim Heuer - “What’s New in Silverlight 3” Mike Harsh’s Slidentity presentation app built with SL3 (incl. sourcecode) Ashish Shetty’s blog post on Offline and Out of Browser support in SL3 Christian Schormann on new features in Blend 3 and last but not least, Eclipse4SL – Create ......

If you have Outlook 2007 installed, you already have a built in RSS feed aggregator. I used to rely entirely on Google Reader for my feed, but I’ve grown to love the convenience of having my email and RSS feeds in one interface. Setting it up is stupid simple. First, there’s the blatent RSS folder that’s part of the treeview in Outlook 2007: Right click and select ‘Add new RSS feed’ Put in the URL of your favourite blog… And voila! Instant information goodness delivered straight to your Outlook! ......

The goodies from Mix are starting to appear early today. First there was the ASP.NET MVC 1.0 release, now the Twitter feed is showing that the Silverlight 3 SDK Beta 1 is available for download as well. I think this is going to be one of those days mimicing the Showcase Showdown on Price is Right where they keep bringing the prizes out, getting better and better until the new car…which of course will be SL 3. D ......

I was talking with a colleague yesterday about the free MVC eBook that was released, and he noticed that the book was using MVC 1.0 and not the release candidates. We figured it was because the full book that the eBook is part of was going to be released in May sometimes, which version 1.0 would be released sometime before then. Well it looks like “sometime” was yesterday. You can hit this link to download ASP.NET MVC 1.0! According to this guy, the fixes from RC2 to 1.0 relate to the version of ......

From the CBC article: <Start> A B.C. sales representative who markets equestrian products in Canada was barred from crossing the U.S. border to attend a trade show last month by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who accused him of trying to steal American jobs. "He looked at me, and in a yelling voice he said, 'You're friggin' stealing jobs away from American citizens,' and I tried telling him that I wasn't," Joel Borsteinas told CBC News. "I said, 'Well I don't actually bring the ......

Donald Belcham will be coming to Winnipeg to deliver a course on brownfield project fundamentals April 27th to 30th. Donald is one of Canada’s elite software developers and has spoken at numerous conferences, code camps, and user groups on software development best practices. Having someone like Donald come to speak is a great opportunity for our market, and I encourage anyone in Winnipeg (or who can make it to Winnipeg for the course) to consider it. Click here for more info Click here to register ......

Welcome back to the further adventures with NAFTA. Last episode, we had a face to face encounter with the Customs and Border Patrol. Part of that interaction was getting a phone number that I could call to gather more information. This is where our story continues… I called the number given, which announced that I was calling the CBP office at the airport. I went through the automated menu, waiting for the part where I could ask questions about visas. I waited…and waited…and waited, listening through ......

I wanted to share a couple of suggested Silverlight 2 reads, especially for those visiting my blog after the recent Winnipeg Code Camp talk I did on Silverlight 2. Pro Silverlight 2 in C# 2008 by Matthew MacDonald. This book is an incredible reference, covering almost every topic that you’d need to know for building Silverlight 2 applications (There’s no dedicated “Architecture” chapter, but I think that’s a topic best served currently by the Microsoft P&P Team and Prism). The book has the benefit ......

I should be sitting in the Denver airport right now waiting for my connecting flight to Tucson, but I’m not. Instead I’m here in Winnipeg trying to make sense of my experience with the U.S. CBP (Customs and Border Protection) representatives. So first, some background: For those of you that don’t know what it is, NAFTA stands for the North American Free Trade Act. This act was intended to help make trade between Canada, the US, and Mexico easier and its been in existence since 1994. Part of NAFTA ......

I wanted to thank the many speakers that came out to the Winnipeg Code Camp this past Saturday. Everyone did a great job, and the investment to the community was greatly appreciated. I was able to record a few videos of some of the speakers, and wanted to highlight the others who I didn’t get a chance to interview. Aaron Erickson – Magenic Al Williams – Sunset Hill Solutions Al has been a great supporter of the Winnipeg developer community, presenting at the .NET User Group and at our recent code ......

We held our second Winnipeg Code Camp today, and from the sessions I attended, the conversations that I saw people having, and the general vibe, I’d say it was a success. We grew to three tracks and had a mix of local speakers as well as from out of town. We even had people attend from out of town: two drove in from Regina! I wanted to thank all those that helped make the event possible, from our great sponsors, our great speakers, and of course our great attendees. We didn’t hit 100 like we wanted ......

As I blogged about previously, G. Andrew Duthie…ahem…”performed” Rebel Yell at the MVP Summit a few weeks ago. The video has been posted on his site and I thought I’d run you through it with my own commentary, pointing out obvious flaws and how I would have done things differently. I also reveal who Andrew Duthie’s muse was while preparing for the performance. Enjoy ......

DevTeach Vancouver is only a few months away, and there’s a great new promotion to help get more people from your organization out. If you register two people for the conference, you can get a third registration free! Details are below: In difficult times the best thing you can do is to upgrade your skills. This is why DevTeach came up with the idea of an Education stimulus package. You can get a free registration when your company or group registers two attendees at our main event. So register 2 ......

You’ve Partied with Palermo, now Dine with D’Arcy! I’m going to be in Tucson, AZ later on this weekend and would love to get together with members of the local dev community for a Geek Dinner on Monday night. For those that have never been to a geek dinner, its really just an excuse for all us geeks to get together and be social…please note that I am *not* offering to pick up the tab for dinner…this is all dutch people. ;) When: Monday, March 16th, 6:30 PM Where: TGIF, 4901 E Broadway Blvd, Tucson, ......

Code camps, start-up camps, and now…Laid Off Camps. From the website, LaidOffCamps are… an ad-hoc gathering of unemployed and nontraditionally employed people (including freelancers, entrepreneurs and startups) who want to share ideas and learn from each other. If you fall into any of those camps, check the site for a location and date close to you! No word if boxes of KD will be part of the attendee swag. D ......

I read a blog post talking about how businesses were looking for more cost-effective ways to train their employees and help their customers. The post itself was fine, but there was this graphic that was used next to the intro text that bothered me… Nobody was associated with the quote itself, but the way it spoke to me suggested that the feedback the author received from businesses was that people are looked at as a cost to be managed. There are some that might read this and say “Well of course they ......

Prism is the sexier term for the Patterns and Practices Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight (You can find out more info and download the components for it here). If you’re going to be doing complex, larger-scale development utilizing Silverlight (or WPF), you should definitely check it out as there’s a great deal of helpful information on how to structure and develop your app. Setting up Prism is not a turn-key type of operation though. Like other application blocks, you download ......

Dear MVP’s, I wanted to write to all of you and express my deepest apology in what must have been a hugely disappointing part of the recent MVP Summit. For those of you who attended the EMP party I know you witnessed this atrocity first hand, and for those that didn’t I’m sure you felt the ripples of grief from those present. I had just written down my name and song on the list at the EMP party. Then, like you, I stood in disbelief as I heard the haunting intro to Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell. Many of ......

I had some people ask me about the shirts I had made up for the MVP Summit: Homeboys (with a pic of Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, and Rob Conery) DLUX – the name christened to me by The Elder Official Friend of Justice Gray – No explanation needed I looked around locally for shirt stores that could do custom prints, but many of them required large quantities or didn’t have any easy way to go over a design without being there in person. Then I found Wordans. Wordans is an online t-shirt making site, ......

Once again we return to the scene of the crime from last year for another evening of geeks getting in touch with their inner musicians. So let the concert begin! Let’s start with a Euro-guy and his rendition of Enter Sandman if the lead singer of Sepultura was on vocals: Video: MVP09-EMP-EuroGuy-EnterSandman Next we have The Elder channelling Garth Brooks… Young man…you must use MVC…I said young man…to learn it who should you see?…how bout, that guy…what’s his name? Don’t you know?…Why its Jef-rey-Pa-a-ler-mo… ......

With so many Twitter clients for the mobile and desktop platforms, one group has been left with no options for falling into the time-suck that is Twitter: the average everyday office employee. These are the people who have restricted internet browsing access and cannot install any 3rd party applications on their computers. How are they supposed to communicate with the outside world in 140 characters or less like the rest of us? Enter Aaron Erickson and his upcoming project: Video: TWIXCEL ......

Caleb Jenkins has been talking up the Fit February initiative for the last few months, and there have been some pretty amazing results and more svelte developers in the community than ever before! I was excited to throw my hat in the ring, until I realized a horrible non-NAFTAish plot to keep Canadians from participating: Only US residents could win the prizes! I caught up to Caleb at the MVP summit and put him on the spot about his anti-Canadian sentiment.* Video: Canada Fit April Announced! *Note: ......